


You Light Up My Life

by rascallyflowerpower



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Childbirth, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Mother-Son Relationship, Motherhood, Other, Parent-Child Relationship, Parenthood, Platonic Soulmates, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:40:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25965238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rascallyflowerpower/pseuds/rascallyflowerpower
Summary: Many different bonds exist between human beings.  One of the first and often the most lasting is the bond between parent and child.  For those who desire children--biological or found--those children blossom within their mother's sight, bringing hues and shades of color along with their presence into her world.  In a world that had dulled to neat and tidy monochrome, Hiroko Katsuki expectantly awaits for the day her growing family brightens her world with unique bursts of color.
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri & Katsuki Yuuri's Family, Katsuki Yuuri's Family & Victor Nikiforov
Comments: 12
Kudos: 35
Collections: Yuri!!! On Ice Soulmates Week 2020





	You Light Up My Life

**Author's Note:**

> Day #1 Prompt for Soulmate AU Week = Sight
> 
> I really wanted to play with the "in your mother's eyes" idea, so this was born out of that. In this particular Soulmate AU world, if you want children in any form (biological or adopted), meeting your romantic soulmate will make their vision go black and white but as they create their family, the color will seep back into their world.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

The room felt as if it was spinning. Sterile white walls and fluorescent lights blinked in and out as Hiroko tried to catch her breath. Nothing she’d read in birthing books had prepared her for just how painful the labor and delivery process would be. Laying there, skin feeling like pins and needles as the beaded sweat began to dry and cool in the air conditioned hospital room, Hiroko felt so incredibly tired. 

Still, all of the physical sensations were nothing compared to the sound of her daughter crying. 

The process had been beyond what she could have prepared for, but the moment she had heard her daughter’s cry, the miracle of what she’d done, what she’d created, had begun to feel real.

“Hiroko, she’s beautiful,” Toshiya had been by her side since her water had broken back at Yu-Topia. Toshiya was ever the kind and caring husband. He dealt with her energy and flights of fancy with gentle smiles and a quiet but intense excitement that matched her own. 

He was the light that removed the color from her world.

Hiroko knew the moment she saw him that they were destined to be together. All of the color in her world faded to black and white. It was hardly a price to pay for knowing that a return of color meant they would one day start a family together.

Human beings destined to have children--whether biological or found children--knew they’d met their romantic other-half when the color in the word disappeared and faded to black and white. Everything looked like the panels of manga. Deep black. Blank white. Barely enough shades of gray to differentiate one thing from another.

Those who knew they weren’t meant to have children only had their colors dimmed to know their romantic other had arrived, the color returning as their life with their partner continued. Having a child wasn’t in the cards for many people, and the world was not so cruel that it would punish them with eternal monochromatic hues. For some selfish people, though, this condition led them to avoid others, not willing to sacrifice the color in their lives simply to meet someone else. Destiny, however, finds everyone in the end.

Today, as Toshiya held out the tiny bundle of blankets to her, Hiroko finally saw what made their world of lineart worth finding.

“Oh, Toshi…” Hiroko exhaled as her eyes began to water. Her daughter was beautiful and would have been beautiful even if color had not begun to bloom within her vision.

Brilliant yellows, browns, and reds began to fill in the black and white lineart, painting the canvas of her vision with deep earth tones. Hiroko let out a small sob as she focused on the yellow of her daughter’s blanket. Yellow used to be one of Hiroko’s favorite colors. The hue was bright and warm, gentle and soft. It was the most wonderful color to see so vibrantly after such a long time. In a way, it reminded Hiroko of the Asian star jasmine’s blossoms--a tiny yellow star that grew out into pure white petals just like the starbursts of yellow she could now see.

“Mari. Her name is Mari.” Hiroko announced, knowing that her husband’s tears meant that he was seeing the same wonderful painting being done because of their daughter’s presence in the world. Bending her forehead down to press against the forehead of her tiny, precious child, Hiroko felt blessed, not only for the restoration of some color into her world, but the miracle who brought it with her.

|||||

“To-To-Toshiya!” Hiroko clinched her hand down onto her husband’s hand. The brown of his fingers turned lighter at the pressure, but Hiroko couldn’t handle one more of these contractions.

It had been difficult to give birth to Mari, but the labor for her and her husband’s second child was turning out to be even longer and far more brutal. Even with the aid of drugs, this time each wave of contractions felt like when she was a girl and broke her arm falling out of a tree--that feeling repeating over and over. This little boy certainly was stubborn.

“What do you need?” Toshiya asked, adjusting his glasses with the hand not currently being crushed by Hiroko’s fingers. 

“Just...help me get up and...walk around…” Hiroko didn’t know why, but she had the urge to get up and pace around the room. She’d read somewhere that it helped labor, but that wasn’t the main motivation.

Something about this child seemed to be telling her that he wanted to get up and move. Once her husband helped her out bed, Hiroko began to shuffle in the small sterile space, her husband at her side with a comforting hand at her back and a guiding hand wrapped tight within hers. The two of them circled through the room together almost as if they were dancing together, and while Hiroko’s body was still wracked with contractions, the pain began to ease slightly with the movement.

This boy was going to be a mover.

Hiroko smiled thinking about just how different the pregnancy and labor was between Mari and the little bun she was growing more and more eager to meet. Far more than her first pregnancy, Hiroko had devoured food. She’d eaten while pregnant with Mari, but this boy required a lot more food. Nothing was ever left uneaten on the table. Hiroko had even found herself giving into the bad habit of picking the untouched leftovers from the compartments on the Yu-Topia guest food trays. It seemed as if she was always hungry.

He was also a kicker. The very first time she’d felt him inside had been such a surprise. She’d called Toshiya over as soon as she felt the baby move, and the two had stood there for a while in awe of their growing baby boy. It wasn’t long after until those kicks became so frequent that it’d pull her from sleep several times a night.

It made sense that, after all that kicking, he’d cause labor to be a marathon that forced her into skating around the birthing suite.

“Come on, baby. It’s been long enough, don’t you think? I’m ready to meet you.” Hiroko whispered lovingly as she laid a hand on her stomach. As if sensing her, the child within her belly gave a hard kick to her palm just before a contraction that signaled he was ready to move.

While the anticipation had stretched on longer than she could stand, once Toshiya and the nurse had helped her back into the bed, Hiroko’s little mover was quickly on his way.

Breathing. Pushing. Breathing. Breathing. And pushing more.

Once he’d made the decision to come out, he certainly didn’t hesitate, and as Hiroko cooled down from her final push, she listened for a cry. It came gently and went away just as softly.

“How precious,” The nurse cooed as she handed Hiroko a little blue bundle. 

Blue. She hadn’t seen blue since the day she’d met Toshiya, but now as she held her new baby boy, more of her vision colored in. Not only was the blanket a light blue, but there were green embroidered flowers all throughout the fabric. Looking up at her husband, Hiroko began to cry as the blacks and whites that had been a standard of her vision began to blend in different hues of gray along Toshiya’s salt and pepper hair.

All the while, her little baby boy looked up at her with bright earthen eyes as if he were observing and contemplating every little detail about his new living situation.

“Hello, Yuri.” Hiroko’s voice was gentle and loving as she adjusted the blue--blue!--blanket around the shoulders of her newborn boy.

“The kanji for ‘lily’ then?” The nurse asked, her clipboard in her hand.

Hiroko shook her head, thinking back over her pregnancy. The active boy dancing within her belly, eating up enough energy to cause her insatiable bouts of gluttony, and now only revealing himself to the world when he was good and ready.

“No,” Hiroko shook her head again, lifting a finger to gently bop the small little nose of her son and provoking bubbling baby giggles, “With the kanji for ‘brave.’”

|||||

Yellows, reds, and browns. Blues and greens. All the shades of gray in between blacks that had become deeper and whites that had become sharper. Everytime Hiroko looked at her two children, her heart soared with the memory of the moment they returned the color into her world simply because they were her world.

There was still something missing, though. Hiroko had gone without colors for so long, that she couldn’t name the ones she was still missing. Watching Mari and Yuri grow up around Yu-Topia, her daughter showing the kind of skills in hospitality that she and Toshiya had while her son ran off to spend his time at Minako’s dance studio and the Ice Castle, left Hiroko wanting for nothing except their happiness.

Still, in the quiet hours of the night when Yu-Topia’s guests were all abed and she returned to their private corner of the inn, she knew there was something missing. At first, Toshiya soothed her by saying it meant they were going to have another child someday, but someday came and went, and Hiroko knew that simply wasn’t going to be the case.

She thought it was something wrong with her. Mari and Yuri were her entire heart, she felt that to be true, but her eyes just seem to see that. Hiroko could never find fault in either of her children, so the fault must lie within herself.

The lack of those unknowable and unnamed colors was felt even more deeply when Yuri moved to America to train and attend the university. Hiroko wanted her son’s dream to come true, but his absence made the blues and greens of her world just a little bit duller. 

For five years she waited and prayed for her son. Each time she got to chat with him over the video system on the computer that Mari set up, seeing her son’s face brightened her day. She knew what he was doing was important, but she missed Yuri with an ache she couldn’t explain. Hiroko longed for the day her family would be whole again. Certainly, there would always be those missing colors, but Hiroko had learned from Yuri’s absence that longing for what she could never have was not nearly as painful as missing what she did have.

Then Yuri returned to her.

Hiroko knew it was temporary. Hiroko knew her son was returning to her wounded and dejected. But he was home.

Yuri was home and things returned to normal. Hiroko wasn’t certain what her boy was planning to do next, and she wasn’t certain how exactly to help him, but she could make him comfortable, give him his space at the studio and ice rink, and prepare his favorite foods.

She’d been doing just that when she heard a ruckus begin in the entrance room. Turning off the frying oil so it didn’t burn, Hiroko washed her hands before heading to see what exactly was causing such a commotion. 

“I...see...Katsuki Yuri? Yes?” The voice speaking hesitant Japanese he seemed to be reading from a travel guide belonged to a fair skinned, fair haired foreigner. Toshiya was attempting to speak with him but was more distracted by the boxes upon boxes that Yu-Topia’s staff were dragging in and stacking in the hall.

All of a sudden, Hiroko found herself facing the new guest, her hands being held in his large ones as the foreigner just continued repeating her son’s name. She recognized a little bit of English, but Hiroko couldn’t entirely understand what the foreigner was asking--except that he was obviously looking for her son.

Hiroko gazed into the incomprehensible foreigner’s misty blue eyes. She recognized him from the photographs and magazines from Yuri’s room, and that answered some of her questions. Still, that wasn’t what astonished her most. 

From the way tender pinks and royal purples bloomed in her vision, Hiroko knew without any doubt, without knowing how or why, that this man would become her son.


End file.
